While
maintaining a brave face on the accelerating stream of bad news coming out of
Baghdad, the administration of President George W. Bush appears increasingly at
a loss, not to say panicked, about what to do.

This
week's abrupt and unscheduled return here by L. Paul Bremer, Washington's
proconsul in Baghdad, for top-level White House consultations, as well as the
partial leak of a pessimistic Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report on
public attitudes in Iraq, pushed the administration off balance.

The
news that at least 15 Italian paramilitary and army troops, as well as 10
others, were killed in a suicide attack on the carabinieri headquarters in the
hitherto relatively peaceful southern city of Nasariyeh on Wednesday seemed
only to underline the sense here that resistance to the US-led occupation in
Iraq is both growing and beyond control.

"It
is a tough situation," Bremer, who heads the Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA), told reporters after emerging from the White House on
Wednesday morning.

"I
have said repeatedly in my discussions, both private and public, for six months
that I am completely confident and optimistic about the outcome in Iraq, but we
will face some difficult days, like today when we had the attack on the Italian
soldiers in the south."

Asked
about the CIA report that found growing popular disillusionment with the US
occupation, Bremer was unusually uncertain. "I think the situation with
the Iraqi public is, frankly, not easy to quantify."

The
CIA report,
whose existence was disclosed by the Philadelphia Inquirer, concluded that
growing numbers of Iraqis believe that the occupation can be defeated and are
supporting the insurgents.

The
report, written by the CIA's station chief in Baghdad, was formally presented
to top officials Monday, but word of its conclusions was also selectively
leaked to various reporters, apparently, said the newspaper, to "make sure
the assessment reaches Bush."

The
Inquirer's source indicated frustration with Iraq hawks, including Vice
President Dick Cheney and the Pentagon's civilian leadership, whose optimistic
assessments of the situation had crowded out more somber analyses in White
House discussions.

According
to the newspaper, the report argued that public skepticism of US intentions in
Iraq remained very high – an assessment corroborated by recent Gallup polls in
Baghdad – and that the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), which was hand-picked by
the CPA, has virtually no popular support.

It
also warned that friction between occupation authorities and the Shia Muslim
community, both in Baghdad and in the southern part of the country, was growing
and could lead to open hostilities, a contingency that has been Washington's
worst nightmare since last March's invasion.

Shiites
account for at least 60 percent of Iraq's total population, more than twice as
much as the Sunnis in central Iraq, the area that US officials have described
as the main focus of Ba'ath Party "terrorists" who presumably remain
loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein.

The
CIA report was obviously written before Wednesday's suicide attack on the
carabinieri in predominantly Shiite Nasariyeh as well as an incident Sunday in
which a US soldier shot and killed the US-appointed mayor of the overwhelmingly
Shiite district of Baghdad, Sadr City, after a scuffle whose circumstances are
being investigated by occupation authorities.

Administration
officials have publicly described Bremer's two-day dash to Washington as
routine, but circumstances belied that explanation.

In
coming here, Bremer was forced to cancel a long-planned meeting in Baghdad with
visiting Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller. Despite public opposition,
Miller's government has supplied more troops to the occupation than any other
country, except the United States and Britain, and last week lost an officer to
hostile fire in Iraq.

"Standing
up Miller of all people is not conducive to getting other countries to send
troops," noted one Congressional aide.

Bremer
met both Tuesday and Wednesday morning with top national-security officials,
including Bush and Cheney. The main points on the agenda included both how to
respond to the increased frequency and lethality of the attacks and whether and
how to accelerate a political transition to an Iraqi government.

On
the military front, the average daily number of attacks on occupation forces
now exceeds 30 – more than twice as many as three months ago – with more than
40 US soldiers killed in just the past two weeks, according to the US commander
in the field, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

In
a lengthy meeting with reporters in Baghdad on Tuesday, Sanchez insisted the
attacks were mainly the work of Ba'ath loyalists and foreign Islamist fighters
but also admitted that Washington still lacks good intelligence on both groups.

Sanchez
also suggested for the first time that resistance forces are now operating at
least at the regional level and possibly with some national coordination with
respect to tactics and targets. Until now, the occupation has depicted the
opposition as small groups acting only at the local level.

It
appears that the US military has decided to respond to the increased level of
resistance with much more aggressive, "shock-and-awe" tactics, a
decision that was previewed last weekend with the unprecedented bombing by US
warplanes of suspected guerrilla arms caches and hideouts near Tikrit.

The
military announced that some two dozen explosions heard in Baghdad on Wednesday
night were US forces carrying out attacks on a suspected guerrilla site.

The
decision to prosecute a more aggressive counterinsurgency campaign carries
serious risks, a point stressed in the CIA report.

As
Milt Bearden, who oversaw US support for the Afghan resistance in the 1980s, wrote
in the New York Times this weekend: "For every mujahadeen killed or
hauled off by Soviet troops in Afghanistan, a revenge group of perhaps half a
dozen members of his family took up arms. Sadly, this same rule probably
applies in Iraq."

The
political front looks equally risky. While the administration wants to
accelerate the process to put an "Iraqi face" on the government, Bremer
appears to have lost confidence in the 24 members of the IGC, including
Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi.

The
IGC, which has until Dec. 15 to submit to the United Nations Security Council a
plan to draft a new constitution, has so far failed to tackle the issue
seriously, and the administration is worried that any delay will derail its own
timetable, including plans to have an elected government in place before the
November, 2004 US presidential elections.

As
a result, the White House is considering abandoning its previous plans and
moving instead to create a provisional government similar to the one installed
by coalition forces in Afghanistan after the Taliban's ouster, which could
oversee the drafting of a constitution. One problem is that it has no obvious
candidate to head such a government, as it did in Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.

Or
the administration could go along with the position of the Shia authorities in
Najaf, who have called for elections to a constitutional convention. But that
too could create new problems or further alienate the Sunni population due to
the fact that Shiites would almost certainly dominate such a process.

Jim
Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online
at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly
for Inter Press Service. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net